One of the most important considerations for any entrepreneur is: How big of a company are you building?
I was asked this question by a top tier VC today regarding Fab.com. Before I discuss my answer, here first is some back-story on the importance of understanding, internalizing, and embracing…
Mary Meeker (Morgan Stanley) talks at Web 2.0 about the Internet trends web execs should be thinking about.
Lots of great content crammed into 18 minutes. She touches on a concept that I wish she’d spent more time on. Do humans want everything on the web/mobile to be like a game?
According to Burson-Marsteller’s Fortune Global 100 Social Media Study, 79 percent of the largest 100 companies in the Fortune Global 500 index are using at least one of the most popular social media platforms: Twitter, Facebook, YouTube or corporate blogs.
65% are on Twitter
54% have a Facebook fan page,
50% have a YouTube channel
33% have corporate blogs
20% are using all of the above
Mashable has more specifics that show power users driving Twitter usage here. The following graphics, also from Mashable illustrate the point.
Marshall Kirkpatrick at ReadWriteWeb has a story on new service, RSSFriends, which offers an RSS feed of any accounts that follow or unfollow a given account among other things. Marshall astutely points out, a service like that can be gold for online brand management.
We hear a lot a about artists and athletes getting into trouble on Twitter. Tweeting at the wrong time or tweeting things they wish they could take back seems to be the new normal. Last night in Indiana was a different story. Lady Gaga followers on Twitter learned real time from Lady Gaga herself why she seemingly inexplicably canceled a show just minutes before she was to go on stage.
Lady GaGa explained what was happening as it was happening via Twitter. In Lady Gaga’s words…
_”I’ve been crying for hours, I feel like I let my fans down 2nite. An hour before the show, I was feeling dizzy and having trouble breathing”
“Paramedics came to take care of me, and told me my heart-rate was irregular— a result of exhaustion and dehydration.”
“can’t apologize enough for how sorry I am. I could hear my fans cheering from my dressing room, I begged everyone to let me go onstage.”
“My stage has complicated mechanical elements,everyone was concerned I’d be in danger during the 2hr show, since I had passed out earlier.”
“I am so devastated. I have performed with the flu, a cold, strep throat: I would never cancel a show just based on discomfort.”
“I hope you can forgive me. I love my little monsters more than anything, you are everything to me. I will make-up the performance on Jan 26.”_
This kind of real-time and heartfelt communication directly to fans did a lot to mitigate the bad feelings of concert goers. Instead of fans left wondering what happened and feeling cheated, they hear exactly what was going on and in this case the rescheduled date. Sure, some fans will still be frustrated, but as a rule more communication is better than less and addressing frustration in the moment can do a ton to defuse a tense situation.
Dish up a few pieces of TechCrunch with all the trimmings, some Mashable potatoes with gravy, a side of ReadWriteWeb, some Inquisitr a big piece of Gigaom and of course a sixpack of Scobleizer to wash it all down.
